California’s low desert, where both Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley are located, continues to enjoy a resurgence in popularity it hasn’t seen since the 1940s and ‘50s, when the area became the getaway destination for Hollywood’s elite. Today, the crowds drawn to Palm Springs are still of a glamorous, upscale nature, but there’s a new ‘it’ destination in the area drawing a hipster crowd away from the low desert and out to the high.
Have you often been told you’re ‘too sensitive’? Are you easily affected by the moods of others? Do you seem to notice subtleties in your environment that other people don’t? Can you ‘mind-read’ the emotions of others without them telling you how they’re feeling? Do big crowds make you uncomfortable? Are you averse to watching violence on TV?
Do you cry easily? Would you do far worse on a task if someone was watching you perform it than you would if you were able to do it without supervision? Do you feel the need to retreat and recharge often, almost as if you had an internal battery that easily runs out of steam?
If you answered yes to many of the above questions (you can take a full quiz here), chances are you may be what is referred to as a Highly Sensitive Person, or HSP. Though you may feel like you don’t fit in, or that there’s something ‘wrong’ with you as a result of these characteristics, the truth is that this collection of attributes is found in 15-20% of the population.
I’ve always known I wanted children. When I was a little girl, I used to fantasize that someone would abandon an orphan on our doorstep. In my imagination, my mother would be too busy with work to care for the child, so he or she would become “mine.” This impulse never left me, and in my early twenties I’d often boast of my intention to have five children (likely to the dismay of my boyfriend at the time). Back then, of course, thirty still seemed old, and like most of my friends, I assumed I’d be married well before then.
It didn’t turn out that way, though. Now I, along with many others I know, have found myself in a difficult modern predicament. Do we keep waiting for love, hoping it’ll come into our lives before our biological clocks run out, or do we take matters into our own hands, prioritizing the baby before the man, whatever that may look like for us?